


Cemetery Weather

by arkhams



Category: My Chemical Romance, The Used
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Artist Gerard Way, Gerbert - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 12:45:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8372755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arkhams/pseuds/arkhams
Summary: “When there’s nothing left for you, whether it be in a person or a place, leave.”
That’s the kind of thing I was always raised to believe, to live by. Mom always told me not to hang on when things were already dead, to loosen my grip when I saw them dying. Kind of like a plant, you know? You see your favorite plant dying on your windowsill, it’s getting dry and brown and you feel bad because you forgot to water it. So you do water it, you try and bring it back to life, but you do it pretty half-heartedly because you know it’s altogether a lost cause.
It’s just harder to do that with a person because you know they might change back, and that’s what kills you.





	1. Detritus

“When there’s nothing left for you, whether it be in a person or a place, leave.”

That’s the kind of thing I was always raised to believe, to live by. Mom always told me not to hang on when things were already dead, to loosen my grip when I saw them dying. Kind of like a plant, you know? You see your favorite plant dying on your windowsill, it’s getting dry and brown and you feel bad because you forgot to water it. So you do water it, you try and bring it back to life, but you do it pretty half-heartedly because you know it’s altogether a lost cause.

It’s just harder to do that with a person because you know they might change back, and that’s what kills you. No matter what you do, they’re going to keep on living and posting pictures on Facebook and tweeting about you sometimes, and there’ll always be that little chance that they might call you up one day and tell you how much they miss you and how sorry they are and how they have to have to have to see you one more time.

But that’s just what you have to learn to live with. Maybe we’ll talk again, maybe we won’t. I can’t control it. I’m trying to control the only thing I have any kind of influence on; how I feel about it. Though even that’s hard.

Can't I just forget?

How can I get indifferent? When am I going to be apathetic? I don’t want to feel anymore. I don’t wanna feel anything at all.

And I don’t, I really don’t. I don’t feel anything when my friends tell me they wish they still saw me. It doesn’t affect me when my boss tells me he’s putting me on review because I hardly ever do my damn job anymore. I really don’t feel anything when it comes to most things. Just that _one_ thing. Just that one person.

Pretty ironic, huh? That the only thing I still care about is the only thing I wish never happened?

I’m getting ahead of myself. Hell, I didn’t even introduce myself. Whatever, I don’t think I need to say all that much. My name’s Bert, I’m twenty, I’m from Utah and I live in New Jersey. At least I do right now, I think I’m gonna be moving back home soon.

Hey, we’ve come full circle. ‘Cause that’s the reason why, you know? It’s like mom always told me. Whether it’s a person or a place. Or a person and a place. A person in a place. A person that brought you to a place until you stopped being a person and then they stopped being a person and the place stopped being their place and now it’s just a place, and all you know about it is that it’s not your place anymore.

I don’t know where my place is anymore. It’s not New Jersey and it’s not here, in the McDonalds near my apartment with a shitty black coffee and a shitty blue pen. Shit, I never even drank coffee before. Whatever. Maybe when it’s all written down I’ll forget. Maybe then it’ll just be the story I wrote in McDonalds, and it won’t have really happened.

~ 

We met at a party. It was at Jepha’s place but I don’t remember the reason for it. Someone’s birthday or something. It doesn’t matter. I was drunk, that’s what’s important. I was high too, but I don’t remember why either. As in, I don’t know what I was high on. I was high because I was sad, and I was sad because I got fired for spending the whole shift hiding out in the bathroom playing some game on my phone because being around people didn’t sound good that day. In hindsight, it wasn’t one of my better solutions but I really did think I’d be able to get away with it.

So I was drunk and high, and in the end, I threw up. Halfway through throwing up, I felt someone holding my hair back. I was so drunk that I started crying and puking at the same time because it was fucking embarrassing. The guy holding my hair just kind of stayed, touching my shoulder and going “shh” and “it’s alright” every couple of seconds.

Not that I remember it. It’s just what he told me when I woke up with him the morning after. We were in his apartment and he had these really white sheets on his bed, the walls were white too, and so was the lampshade and I think even the photo frames. That’s why it was so funny to see him there because he had black hair and was sleeping in black clothes.

I told him I was sorry for being such a loser and he said it was alright, and that he was glad I was a loser because otherwise, he’d have never gotten to talk to me since I was so busy talking to everyone else. That made me feel bad and I apologised but he said he meant it, that he was glad. I thought that was kind of weird.

“Did I ask your name already?”

“Yeah,” he had this lopsided grin that creased at the sides. “About five times when we were on the way back.”

“Shit.” I laughed because it was awkward. “What is it?”

“Gerard,” he said, and that’s when he came back and sat on the bed next to me. He’d been at the other side of the room looking up hotels it looked like. “Is your name really Bert or were you too drunk to remember your real name?”

“It’s really Bert,” I said, and pulled the hood up on my jacket. It wasn’t cold, it’s just something I do a lot when I’m embarrassed. “We didn’t fuck, right?”

Gerard giggled, like actually giggled. I don’t think I’d ever heard someone giggle in real life before, I still don’t think I have. “No, but not for lack of trying. You kept trying to make out with my neck all night.”

Eventually I left, but we watched TV for a couple of hours and he made me breakfast before I left. I would’ve asked for his number if it didn’t sound so cliché, plus I wasn’t sure I wanted to see him again after he’d seen me acting so damn stupid the night before. He said he knew Jepha anyway, I knew I’d be able to get it from him. It was a good morning, though, that’s my point. It was a good morning because of the bad night before and I was glad I met him.

While I was walking home that’s what I was thinking. I thought about how I could possibly ask to see him again after that, what kind of things he might wanna do. He seemed like an art fag, the kind of guy you’d take to an art museum then fuck in the bathroom, and that wasn’t really my kind of thing usually but it did sound pretty good when I pictured it with Gerard.

I was getting ahead of myself, I thought. I should stop thinking about that and start working out how I was going to get another job, how I’d go about not losing my apartment. I’d have stressed about that a lot less if I knew I’d end up moving back in with Quinn, though. I wasted a lot of time thinking about it that I could’ve spent on other things.

I mean, I say a ‘lot’ of time. I probably applied only for about ten different jobs and went to two interviews which I admittedly half-assed and forgot about as soon as I left them. No wonder I didn’t get a job when you think about it.

So that was when we met, and I really did kind of have a crush on him. I was eighteen, so don’t get on my back about saying the word crush because that’s what it was at the time. I’m gonna take a break and go to the bathroom because there’s a guy at the other table here staring right at me, and when I come back I’m gonna move and sit somewhere else. I’m not in the mood to talk to anyone.


	2. Chapter 2

That guy’s still sitting there eating his fucking Big Mac. Whatever. I’m at the other side of the place now and I don’t think he saw me sit down.

The next time I saw Gerard turned out to be at a bus stop. I remember it really well, I was chewing peppermint gum and it tasted really good when it mixed with the taste of tobacco, and I should’ve worn something more than a t-shirt and a hoodie because I remember being so fucking cold. Utah in January is never the greatest place to be, it’s always freezing.

“Oh, hey!” Gerard had said. He’d seen me first. “Bert, right? Small world!” _Small world._ He always said corny things like that.

“Yeah, Gerard, right?” I knew for a fact it was Gerard.

“Yeah! Hey, where you going?” He dropped his earphones into the neck of his black coat and gave me a crooked grin, holding a cigarette in his mouth whilst he fiddled with them. “What bus’re you getting, I mean?”

I think I tried to laugh then. “645. What’re you getting?”

“Hey, I’m getting that one too. Weird!” He didn’t look like he’d thought it to be so weird as you’d think he did. “Where’re you going?”

“Nowhere, really.” I shrugged. “Gotta go to the store, that’s all.”

Gerard’s jaw dropped, and he really did look stupid. I remember. I didn’t hate it though, it was strange. “No way! Stop it!” He giggled like he seemed to always do. “Next you’re gonna tell me you’re getting bread and baloney too.”

I know I tried to laugh that time. “Nah, not it.”

“Ah, dangit. Can’t win ‘em all, I guess.” He pulled out his phone to look at the time and he just talked about how late the bus was and how it was always late and I’d agreed with him, telling him how it was always late for me too. When the bus did come he sat next to me and started talking about a band he was seeing later that day, telling me they were a really great post-rock band from Texas and that they were called Explosions In The Sky. He talked so loud that I was worried other people on the bus might think we were weird.

“You’ve got to come!” He kept saying, even after I’d told him I would.

It felt weird having Gerard follow me around the store, it was like he’d known me forever the way he talked to me. He had something to say about everything I picked up and kept making dorky jokes, and I kept pretending they were funny. I didn’t really know why I was doing that. I think I just liked hearing that stupid giggle. “Ie-heh-ha!” It was stupid. I hate it. I hate thinking about that fucking stupid fucking fucking stupid giggle.

When I went to pay he followed me there too, and he followed me out of the store to the bus stop and sat next to me on the bus again. I stopped realizing it after a while but I do remember it well.

“Hey!” He interrupted his own sentence. “You wanna come over before the concert? It’s in a few hours, we can go to my place if you want to. I’ve got this, like, casserole kinda thing in the oven, it’s probably too big for me to eat it all on my own so you can have some. You’re probably hungry, right? What time is it?” He looked at the time on his phone. “Geez, it’s later than I thought. You can leave your shit at my place if you wanna and get it after the concert. Stay over if you want to, I’m not doing anything.”

I just nodded every so often and that was enough to keep him talking, which was great for me because I didn’t really feel like saying anything. He sure talked a lot, though.

So we got to his apartment and he hooked his laptop up to the TV and started playing a movie. He played so many that I can’t remember which one it was, but it could have been that Misery movie by Stephen King. That made me think a little less that he was coming onto me so heavy, so I was happy about it. I don’t think we ever got to the part where she breaks his feet, though.

Even while he was eating he talked a fucking ton. We were sitting there on the couch with the bowls atop cushions on our legs and he was just jabbering about something he was studying at university. I still don’t really know what he studied, in all honesty. Most of what he said was white noise, but in a good way, like the kind people play when they’re trying to sleep.

“Hey, it’s getting late. You wanna go soon? I can order a cab or something if you don’t wanna get the bus, I think they’re pretty cheap around here.” The ‘around here’ comment made me notice his accent.

“You’re not from here?”

“Nah, I’m from New Jersey, I’m moving back there in a little while ‘cause that’s where I go to school. Like, not until August or somethin’, though. I don’t have school for a pretty long time.” He was talking while searching for the number to call for a cab. He even talked to me whilst he was ordering it and I thought that was funny. It was cool that he didn’t make me pay for half the ride even though I offered a few times, and he even paid for my ticket when we got there.

“This is my brother, Mikey this is Bert. Does anyone want a drink?”

He bought us all beers and spilled most of them whilst he was walking back because it was hard to hold three at once. He sat against the wall and watched the band play and he kept biting his fingernails and grinning as they did, even giggling and balling his hands into fists when they played his favorite songs. His eyes got all teary sometimes too but it never seemed to smudge his makeup any more than it already was. He was stupid in love with that band.

We were a little drunk when we left but not Mikey, he just drove back to his apartment whilst Gerard and I got another cab to his. He seemed really impressed when I asked him if he wanted to smoke a blunt because he always thought it was hard to get drugs and only the cool kids could find them. It was funny how he smoked it. We were sitting on his kitchen floor and he held it with his thumb and forefinger like they do in drug PSAs, and I’m really not sure how much of it he actually inhaled. I asked him if it was his first time and he said it wasn’t but that he didn’t smoke all that often. I dunno if I believe that, he always was kind of a liar. More in a creative way than anything, like he wanted me to think he was a little more interesting than he was. He never needed to do that.

You’re probably thinking we had sex that night but I swear we didn’t, though he did put his arms all around me when we both slept in his bed after we’d sat around watching TV and making out for a few hours. I remember just lying there for so long with my eyes closed even though he fell asleep pretty much straight away, and he’d left his laptop on and it was playing some auto-generated playlist of piano music. He was bigger than me and I hadn’t slept with anyone in a really long time. I fucking wish that had been the last time I saw him. Fuck, I wish I’d died in my sleep that night and never woken up again and that that was the last night of my life. That would’ve been pretty fucking perfect.

Whatever. I went home in the morning, getting the bus despite him offering time and time to get me a taxi. That was the time I did get his number, I asked for it right as I was leaving as though the thought had just occurred to me even though I’d been trying for a while to figure out just how to ask.

He read it out to me, then gave me a hug. “I really like you, Bert.” He’d said.

“I really like you too.”

“You do?”

“Yeah! I do.”

He let go of me then and grinned, his hands still on my shoulders. “I don’t wanna sound stupid,” he’d said, “but I think you’re really special, you know? I don’t think you’re like everyone else.”

I didn’t think it sounded stupid but I thought it was strange. “You don’t really know me that well…”

“No! I know-it’s just… you know what I mean?”

I said I did and I left, and I texted him when I got home. I still have all the texts saved actually, I can write out the conversation for real now.

**hey Gerard it’s bert, thanks for last night it was great**

**nw! happy I saw u again since I didn’t get ur number the first time lol**

**haha me too**

**:) don’t be a stranger**

**I wont**

Then there's a few messages about Frank's party and something about another concert he wanted to go to, and after that's where he started putting kisses after everything he said.


	3. Chapter 3

You know, what I really remember is that I stayed over at Quinn’s house the next night and told him about Gerard because Quinn’d been all interested.

“Oh, yeah?” He’d said. He sat right up on his bed and put down the magazine he’d been reading. “So, what, are you seeing him again?”

“I guess so,” I said, sitting cross-legged on the floor with my back against his wardrobe. “I don’t know when yet but it’s like whatever I say he’s gonna be down for it.”

“He’s really into you, huh?” Quinn tossed the back of his hair how he does and looked kind of like he was making fun of me, but that’s just his face. He could be telling you his mom died and he’d look as though it was funny to him.

“Seems like it.”

“That’s good, though,” he said as though I’d disputed it. “And you like him?”

I shrugged. “Yeah.”

“That’s fuckin’ good,” he said, and looked off into some kind of distance like he really had to think on it. “When do I get to meet him?”

“Fuckin’ I don’t know,” I said, “Didn’t you meet him at Jepha’s party?”

“The one on Saturday?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know, I don’t even know who he is.”

“Oh right, uh… get him on Facebook then.”

“Don’t you already have him?”

“Yeah.”

“You show me then.”

“Oh… right.” I got out my phone and went through it for a photo of him. There were quite a lot, but none seemed good enough. I eventually settled on a pretty good one of him in a club or something. I liked it because whoever it was behind the camera had their flash on and it make his eyes look really dark and big.

“Oh… yeah, I met him.” Quinn took the phone from me and looked at it closer, and started swiping through his photos without asking. “He asked me for a lighter.”

“Yeah? What did you think?”

Quinn shrugged that time. “I didn’t think much, did I? Met him for a second, hardly talked to him.”

“Well what did he say to you?”

“I said I dunno, I was drunk anyway. He was just blabbing about something, I wasn’t really listening.” He passed my phone back and picked up the magazine again.

“Yeah, sounds like him.” I said, locking my phone and putting it away. “Isn’t it kind of weird he’s so into me?”

“How d’you mean?”

“’Cause. I only met him Saturday and now he’s saying he thinks I’m special and that he really likes me. He made me fuckin’ breakfast. Isn’t that weird?”

“Fuck, Bert, no. I don’t think so.” He glanced at me for a second. “He’s probably just lonely or somethin’. Y’know? Who cares, anyway? You said you like him.”

“I do like him-“

“Then quit worryin’ so fuckin’ much. Geez, enjoy a good thing.”

“My point is that I don’t _know_ if it’s a good thing, cunt.”

Quinn groaned real loud and dropped the magazine on the floor. “If he LIKES you and you LIKE him, it’s a fuckin’ good thing. What’s your problem?”

“I ain’t got a problem.” I said, and I laughed at him because he was overreacting so damn much. “Chill out, won’t ya? Here.” I dug in my pocket and passed him a blunt. “Your mom's not home you said.”

That ended up being a pretty decent day as it was. I really miss Quinn now I’m here, we hardly talk now. I hardly talk to anyone from Utah anymore, I’ve got all these new friends now but I don’t much like any of them. They all talk about boring shit like haircuts and bistros. But I’m dumb so I never talk to anyone unless they talk to me first and Quinn does the same thing, so now we just don’t talk. I still have him on Facebook, so sometimes I’ll see someone tag him in a photo and his hair’ll be a little longer than the last time I saw it or he’ll have a different shirt on, but that’s the height of it.

Whatever. I’ll go home soon and I’ll knock on his door and it’ll be like nothing ever happened when I tell him I got a new vinyl and ask if he wants to listen to it.

Unless of course it isn’t, like if I go knock on his dumb door and his mom opens it and tells me he isn’t home, or that there’s a girl over and ‘can you come back later? I’ll tell him you called’. He’s always got some stupid girl over, he loves stupid girls because they’re the only kind that’ll put up with him. Nothing against Quinn, he’s just a little weird. Like he’ll stay up until four in the morning when he’s got somewhere to be that day, but go to sleep at ten when he has no plans the next day. Or how he’ll refuse to mix beans with rice because they get mixed up in his stomach either way.

I’m supposed to be writing about Gerard, not Quinn. That’s another dumb thing I do, I go off topic without realizing it when I don’t want to talk about something. It gets really annoying I’ll bet.

I don’t know. I can’t talk about Gerard without talking about how everything else was then. Things just were better, there’s no getting around that. Sometimes I wonder if he happened to step in at a good time by accident, so when it appeared that he made my life better it was just a coincidence and things would have gotten better regardless. Other times I know that’s bullshit. I’m just a whiny bitch, I’m complaining that I have to write about something I chose to buy paper JUST to write about. That’s my fucking problem. The fact that I make myself suffer then think I can bitch about it.

A lot of the time that really pissed Gerard off, I know it did. He’d ask me to go somewhere, but he’d ask me at a time when I was sad and I’d get mad about it. I remember one conversation went something like this:

“Frank and Jamia wanna know if we wanna go to the movies today, sound good?”

“Is it okay if we don’t? You can still go if you want to.”

“Oh--yeah, sure! How come?”

“I dunno. I don’t feel so good.”

“Really? What’s up?” And he came and sat next to me, and put his arm around me. I just shrugged and he hummed real sad and kissed my cheek. “Aw, babe… what do you wanna do? We can do anything you want. You wanna watch a movie here?”

“No, I don’t wanna do anything.” I kind of shoved him off then, and he didn’t speak for a second.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing! I just don’t wanna fuckin’ watch a movie, that’s all! What’s wrong with not wanting to watch a fuckin’ movie?”

Yeah, he did get mad at that. I don’t blame him. I don’t even know why I felt so damn bad, nothing had even happened. It’s ironic but I think I felt really lonely. I do that sometimes, I get lonely but refuse to talk to anyone. It’s weird, I know. I don’t understand it either.

Maybe that was what I did wrong. If I’d have just gone to the fucking movies with them then maybe nothing _would_ have gone wrong. Not even just that example, just that shit. ‘That shit’ being the stupid shit I did. That I DO. The stupid shit I do.


	4. Chapter 4

I wish I could write down every single time I met Gerard but I don’t think I’d be able to even if I tried. We met each other a lot of times. I guess I’ll just pick the most important times.

Like I said, we started off in January on a Saturday. Which meant the month after was February, and you better bet your ass Gerard was a sucker for Valentine’s Day. So what he did, he went over to my place even though it was about a month since we met, and woke me up knocking so hard on the door. When I answered it he was standing there, his stupid leather jacket and gay eyeliner, and he passed me this blue plastic bag. It was heavy when I took it from him and I didn’t say anything at first because I was so surprised. He blinked and he smiled and then he said ‘good morning’. I said the same thing back and he giggled because he’d been standing there for so long.

“So…?”

“Fuck, uh—yeah, come in?” It wasn’t supposed to sound like a question but he nodded like I’d said the right thing. He sat on my couch and I sat next to him, crossing my legs on it and facing his direction. I realized then that I still had the bag in my hand and I looked inside it.

See, I didn’t always have the internet at my place because it was expensive and I had better things to be spending money on. So you know what he did? Well, the bag was full of DVDs and even a couple of Xbox games, and one of those USBs you plug into your laptop and it connects you to the internet.

That really surprised me. “What’s this for?” I’d said, and I’d laughed. 

“For you, silly! I know you won’t’ve gotten me anything, that’s totally cool because I know we’re not dating or anything, I just thought you’d want ‘em ‘cause I don’t use ‘em anymore (I knew for a fact he’d bought them special, they weren’t even opened) and—“ he shrugged, grinning. “Yeah. Are they good?”

“Theyre—yeah, they’re _good_ , why did you—“

He leaned over and kissed me then which was great because it made me shut up until I could just say thank you and he could say I was welcome to it, and I could offer him something to eat.

After that, we ate pancakes and watched TV. He made them in the end because I didn’t really know how to cook anything, and they were really good. I’m sure that was the first day we ever fucked. Is it okay to call it fucking? I don’t know. It was romantic as fuck, though. It was still daytime so there was all this light coming in through the curtains, and he kept his eyes closed so I didn’t feel weird about looking at him while we did. He always looked pretty during sex—fake as hell and totally putting on a show, but it was pretty anyway. A little bit of me wonders if he was a virgin before that but I don’t think he was, I just wonder for fun.

We both canceled any plans we had for that day and stayed in my apartment. I’d never had a Valentine’s Day like that before and I don’t think I will again, it was just some kind of teenage magic that you can’t recreate when you’re older.

The thing I remember most, and I really mean it this time, is how good it felt to do nothing with Gerard. It wasn’t boring and it stopped being awkward after a few days. What would happen is he would sit next to me, then really subtly tug on my clothes or my arms until I was lying on him and his arm was around me, and after a while it became so fucking easy to sleep with him there too. I don’t know why the Hell I loved him that much. Maybe I didn’t—maybe I just loved to not be alone, to have someone else fill the space in between conversations by just rambling about his comic books and his band and his stupid friends and university.

I hate this. Why am I doing this to myself? I still have his number. I could call him, and he’d fucking answer me, I know it.

“You know what?”

“Mm.”

“… It’s just funny.”

“What’s funny?”

I’d shrugged and put my arms around his waist, and he put one around my back. “I feel like I’ve known you for a long time.”

“Yeah?” He’d squeezed my shoulder.

“Yeah.” I didn’t say anything for a minute, and for once he didn’t either. “It’s… I think you’re really weird, right? But in a weird good way. And I don’t really get it.”

“Get what? You’re so fuckin’ vague, all the time.”

“Sorry—I mean, I don’t get why you like me.”

“Well, I mean, obviously you don’t.” Gerard had hummed out a laugh. “I didn’t think you did. I don’t really know, I just do. Like I said, you’re just… different somehow.”

“But some _how_?”

He’d shrugged again but bigger that time. “I don’t know!”

I know now what he liked about me. He’s an artist, right? They love tragic shit and that’s all I really am when you get right down to it. He had a lot of money, I didn’t. He had a really big and close family and an academic career and a lot of friends, and I didn’t. That’s what I hate about him most of all. I don’t know if he ever really knew who I was. If he had, I don’t think he’d have liked me much at all. And I don’t blame him, I never would’ve. It’s just that the worst part is that he really thought he did.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. Hey, maybe I’ll send it all to him in the mail, I’ve still got his address on a letter he sent me. That’s another thing he loved doing, he’d send me love letters all the time with stickers all over them. I have one of them here, actually.

‘Hi Bert!

Just wanted to say that I love you so much and you’re so special to me. I hope you know how much you’re loved and that I can’t wait to see you when you move up here! It’s only 2 weeks now!!!

Mikey says hi too but I guess he could’ve told you that himself since you’re both in Utah……… he’s lazy.

BTW I’ve put some of the comic I’m writing in the envelope too, let me know what you think!!! I’ve got like half of it done now, super excited about it

<3 <3 

Love Gerard’

Reading that makes me want to fucking die. When don’t I want to fucking die? Maybe when I’m done writing this I’ll just stop being a pussy and kill myself. It’d be about time, right?


End file.
